ABBA – Today the world, tomorrow the U.S. By John Rockwell

ABBA, the Swedish pop-music quartet, finds itself in a most curious position.
Not really well-known in the
United States, it is a superstar everywhere
else. In fact, with all due respect to Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles, ABBA can
lay convincing claim to being the best-selling pop-music act in the world.

The group’s new record, ABBA-The Album,
made in conjunction with a classily produced film, may change its status in this
country – which is, after all, by far the most lucrative pop market. Besides
that, conquering America
is a challenge to the prestige of even the richest and most self-satisfied of
foreign rockers. The trouble is that ABBA has reached such a level of success
elsewhere that the group doesn’t want to tour here until it is hugely popular –
yet touring helps promote the recorded product. In addition, the very nature of
ABBA’s music has sometimes seemed to make the group’s live shows cumbersome and
artistically problematic.

That music is readily available to record buyers in this country, however,
and enough have responded that one can hardly feel too sorry for the band. Those
who do respond find something very appealing, since ABBA’s music is both rooted
in basic rock traditions and remarkably fresh and original.

ABBA represents a healthy challenge to the two-decades-long dominance of
Western pop music by Britain
and the United States.
The musical context from which ABBA evolved is that of so-called Euro-pop – a
flossy, bouncy, sometimes triumphantly silly fluff-music that derives not from the urgency of American
blues (the source of rock) but from older forms of European folk music.

ABBA was formed when four successful Swedish pop performers came together in
1969, first personally and then professionally. Agnetha Fältskog is now married
to Björn Ulvaeus and Anni-Frid Lyngstad lives with Benny Andersson. ABBA is an
acronym of their first names, although they first had doubts about it, since it
is also the name of a well-known Swedish brand of pickled herring.

The group broke through internationally – with the aid of some shrewd advance
planning by the band’s “fifth member” and frequent co-lyricist, Stig Anderson –
after it won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton, England.
The contest is a ritual event in Europe, watched by millions, and serves as a
promotional mechanism in an area divided by language and lacking the commercial
radio outlets of the United
States.

“Everybody looks on us as a product of the Eurovision thing, but we’re not,”
Benny Andersson argued. Our conversation took place recently in Stockholm’s lovely Stallmastaregarden
restaurant, a former royal stable surrounded by gardens. It was an interesting
comment on Sweden’s
fabled reserve that although the members of ABBA are probably as well known as
any living Swedish citizens in their own country, they were not bothered by
anyone in the restaurant – a few distantly gazing, awestruck children aside.

“Eurovision helped us,” Mr Ulvaeus qualified. “It was a way to make it
quickly on the outside, but we were on our way anyhow.”

“It was a fantastic experience,” Mr Ulvaeus added. “Everybody’s watching it
and everybody’s into it – in Europe, at least.”

Because of the language problem and the continued dominance of English in
international discourse and Anglo-American pop music, ABBA’s members had decided
even before their Eurovision victory to write and sing all their songs in
English – which they do with only a slight, and charming, accent. In turn, that
has meant that most of ABBA’s lyrics have been rather inconsequential, moon-June
stuff.

But the group believes that in most instances it’s the music that sells a pop
record, and they are surely correct. And in ABBA’s case the music is very
appealing indeed. The debts to the past have mostly to do with the density and
grandiosity of their production values. Mr Ulvaeus describes the group as “Spector
freaks,” and the massive, multiple-overdubbed effects certainly owe much to Phil
Spector’s Wagnerian “wall of sound” approach of a decade ago. But in conjunction
with their invaluable engineer, Michael B. Tretow, Mr Ulvaeus and Mr Andersson
have updated Mr Spector’s technique with sounds that could only be obtained from
modern instruments (especially synthesizers and other electronic keyboards) and
in modern recording studios: the shimmering exoticism of texture supporting
nearly every ABBA song is both deceptively progressive and sweetly compelling.

If all this sounds as if the women in the group are slightly extraneous,
that’s partly true – at least in the creative sense of Miss Fältskog and Miss
Lyngstad have their frisky sides, which is amusing for a group that projects
such a squeaky-clean image and appeals to children and older people as well as
youngsters. Much is made of Miss Fältskog’s wiggling bottom in concert, and Miss
Lyngstad was sporting a graphically pornographic pendant during our luncheon.
She also put out a solo disk in Sweden with a cover that is probably
the most implicitly sexual in the history of album art. But the two women
remained mostly demure during our talk and disclaimed any interest in
contributing to the group’s songwriting.

“I helped write a song on our first album, but I think it’s the boys’
business to write the songs for ABBA,” Miss Fältskog offered, although she too
put out a solo album for which she co-wrote most of the material.

“We do take a big part in the studio,” Miss Lyngstad added. “We often come up
with ideas.”

What they come up with even more, however, is singing – and, in the stage
show, their flirtatious sexuality dominates the group’s act. Both women have
classic pop sopranos, capable of evocative work in solo passages but even more
suitable for the soaring harmonies the group favors, which are highly
reminiscent of the Mamas and the Papas.

All of this would go for naught, though, unless the two composers could come
up with winning melodies and clever twists. (or “hooks,” in pop-music parlance).
And that – despite growing “pressure, from inside and outside,” as they put it -
they have consistently been able to do. Most ABBA songs sound like potential (or
actual) hit singles, and the reason is that the chorus is almost invariably a
tune that has listeners humming compulsively after only a couple of hearings.

The result of all of this has been a level of success that few groups outside
the Anglo-American axis have enjoyed. Stig Anderson, the group’s manager, says
that ABBA surpasses all previous pop acts in terms of sales, although he admits
that statements of that sort cannot be proven. “It is possible to say that we
are the most successful band in the world, because we have sold more records
than anybody else,” he explained. “We have sold between 75 and 100 million
singles, albums, cassettes and eight-tracks. Most figures that you hear are just
figures. We are trying to cut it down to what we have sold. We know that we have
sold more than the Beatles or Elvis Presley.”

Since ABBA hasn’t fled Sweden,
which has as severe a tax structure as Britain, Mr Anderson has diversified
the band’s income into a number of different enterprises. There is even a barter
agreement with Eastern Europe to receive
royalties in such goods as oil and vegetables. According to Affarsvarlden, a
Swedish business weekly, ABBA is the most profitable corporation in the country,
bar none.

Although the group has appeared here for promotional purposes and has been
seen performing on American television, there are no plans yet for a tour of
this country. Which in turn means that there probably won’t be much of an
audience for the group’s new film – which is doing booming business in countries
like Britain (where the album is already No. 1) and Australia
(where the tour footage was filmed).

Part of the problem is that ABBA members value their private lives and the
time devoted to composing in a little island shack near Stockholm. And their growing perfectionism
means that nearly a year is spent recording each new album, leaving little time
to tour if an annual album is to be made. “Each record takes double the time of
the one before,” Mr Ulvaeus said worriedly.

In the meantime, the new disk (the title, ABBA–The
Album goes with ABBA–The Movie
and the sheet music version, ABBA-The
Folio) is no letdown. As lyricists, the three men (counting their manager)
have attempted somewhat bolder themes, and by and large seem able to encompass
them without stumbling into pretension. And the music – one slightly stiff and
strained rock attempt aside – is as heartfelt and lush as ever.

It would be nice if ABBA were to finally catch on here with the same
magnitude that the group has elsewhere – catch on massively and consistently,
that is: ABBA has had its successes here, including one No. 1 single last year,
Dancing Queen. Because this band
represents as refreshing an example of pure pop as anything being done today.
Pop music used to be simply and unaffectedly entertaining, back before
rock-and-roll. At its best, rock still lifts popular music into a new
seriousness and intensity. But too often it’s merely raucous or pretentious, and
in the meantime, middle-of-the-road alternatives wallow in sentimentality and
schlock. ABBA is both energetic and mightily fun – rather like Fleetwood Mac,
although stemming from a different set of traditions. It’s a lovely combination,
and one can be heartily recommended to get a hold of this new album – or the
band’s Arrival disk or its
Greatest Hits collection. All of them
are a testimony to vitality and charm. Transcribed for ABBA World